Claire Cunningham Songs of the Wayfarer
Play Trailer“I really love turning into this sort of four-legged creature. All the little places that you can wedge the crutch really right into a corner or into a crack. In Scotland, we’d say nooks and crannies. I get so lost in that sort of play…when the ground really becomes… my companion.”
CLAIRE CUNNINGHAM
In this new solo Claire Cunningham asks what it is to wander? To seek to scale great heights? What can be learned from those of us who reach for the ground through crutches as 4-legged creatures, the choreography of crip* navigation and the maps we would re-draw? Of scale and time and energy? What it means to keep going and, importantly, the wisdom to know when to turn back.
Led by her lived-experience as a disabled person, her memory of training as a classical singer, knowledge drawn from the world of mountaineering, and Gustav Mahler’s ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’, Claire Cunningham sets out to traverse known and unfamiliar landscapes. Through a crip* lens, Cunningham invites us to pay closer attention to the ways we navigate the physical world, alongside profound loss and change in our lives.
*Crip is a political and cultural identity embraced by some disabled individuals
Read the glossary and song lyrics, and information about the seating
Read information about Relaxed performances of this production
Header image © Sven Hagolani
Claire Cunningham Production.
Created as part of the Einstein Strategic Professorship „Choreography, Dance and Disability Arts“ at the HZT Berlin.
Co-commissioned and co-produced by Mousonturm Frankfurt, No Limits Festival Hong Kong, HAU Hebbel am Ufer & No Limits Festival Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, Next Festival Kotrijk, Sadler´s Wells London and Dampfzentrale Bern. An Unlimited International Strategic commission made possible thanks to funding from British Council.